exhibit in here at that time, nor did I have any English for the Bench All I am doing now is physically sending the exhibit to the SecretaryGeneral and distributing the English copies of the Exhibit, which has been marked for identification solely, as 522.
THE PRESIDENT: The record will so show.
MR. LA FOLLETTE: I distributed German copies, but if any counsel did not get one, I will put them here on the table. There are several extra copies still there on the counsel table.
That is all. Thank you.
DR. SCHILF: (Counsel for the defendant Klemm): May it please the Court, before I continue with the examination of the witness Klemm, I would like to say the following:
In the course of this morning, Exhibit 252 -- that is in document book III-L -- will be discussed by me with the witness. I would like to draw Your Honors! attention to the fact that this is a very extensive document, and I believe, in the interest of understanding the statements of the witness, it would be necessary for Your Honors to have that document before you while I examine the witness. Perhaps that exhibit 252 could be brought into the courtroom by the messenger. I would like to address the same remark to the Prosecution.
THE PRESIDENT: That is book III-L?
DR. SCHILF: Yes, document book III-L.
HERBERT KLEMM (Resumed) DIRECT EXAMINATION (Continued) BY DR. SCHILF:
Q Herr Klemm, before the session was interrupted, we had discussed your work in the Justice Group of the Party Chancellery, and we had finished with that discussion. There was also an opportunity for you to give your views concerning all documents which the Prosecution submitted. Now, I have a few more questions about your work in the Party Chancellery.
The first question concerns Bormann's attitude to the Justice Group -- that is, Department III-C at the Party Chancellery. Will you please give us your views about that?
A.- Bormann was an opponent of the jurists and, in general, held them in disrespect. The word "jurist" was a term for abuse with him. That went so far that in his marginal notes on some applications or statements he employed the word "jurist", even if the expert whose paper he did not like was not a jurist at all. To Bormann, the jurist was an obstacle in the way of the political work and aims of the Party, To him, as I have said before, the jurist was a necessary evil. That was true in particular of Department III and of Justice Group 111-c.
Q.- What was your own attitude concerning Bormann? Were you able to exert any influence on Bormann?
A.- When I was called to the staff of the Fuehrer's Deputy, Bormann was the head of the staff, the Stabsleiter of the Fuehrer's Deputy Staff, but already since the outbreak of the war -- that is to say for 18 months -he had been at the Fuehrer's headquarters.
I made Bormann's acquaintance, and he mine, after I started to work in the Fuehrer's Deputy's Office. Occasionally he passed through Munich when he was on some trip, and that occasion was used for my being introduced to him. Bormann was a very informal person and lacked manners. That introduction too took place in a hurry, without his asking me to come into his room.
To Bormann, I always stated my own opinion as frankly as possible. One of the Referents at the Reichsleiter Bureau, who later on, in 1942 or 1943, came to Munich and who commanded a certain survey over all the applications and statements that reached Bormann, told me that I was the one among the Referents who stated his opinion in the most definite manner without regard to the fact as to whether it would please or displease Bormann.
During my work, which went on for two years and nine months in Munich, I believe that three to five times -- I think it was only three times, I had an opportunity to make a personal oral report to Bormann. That was in Munich or in Berlin. I never went to the Fuehrer's headquarters. The reports took, at the utmost, ten to fifteen minutes. During the barely three years I saw Bormann perhaps twelve times. When I did not make a report to Bormann, my meetings with Bormann always took place among a large circle of people. During the time when I was in Munich I did have the Party badge in gold awarded to me by him, though. That was in 1943 on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the day on which Hitler became Reich Chancellor. But at the same time about twenty people from the Party Chancellery received that award, and I could not be left out because among those to whom the Party badge in gold was awarded at the time, there were several people who had joined the Party after me, that is to say, after 1933. I had no human contact with Bormann whatsoever, and nobody in the Party Chancellery had such contact. Conversations and relations with him generally were very cold, very impersonal. He never showed any human emotion, and I myself disliked him altogether for certain matters concerning his private life.
When I loft the Party Chancellery and wont to the Ministry of Justice I did not oven pay a farewell visit to him. I could arrange that fairly easily, because he was at the Fuehrer's headquarters, but I did not use the opportunity and I did not ask to be told when he came to Berlin to the office of the Party Chancellery there. That had another reason as well. When I left the Party Chancellery, several months before several persons had left the Party Chancellery and in the case of one or two Bormann, when they paid him a farewell visit, had given them a check. I wanted to avoid that under all circumstances, and that was the real reason why I did not go to say good-bye to him. As Undersecretary I never called on Bormann. Once I wrote a letter to him in his capacity as secretary to the Fuehrer as to when and if I should report to the Fuehrer and pay him a visit.
He replied that I should see to it that I had an impeccable uniform, as Hitler attached a great deal of importance to such exterior matters. As for months I couldn't do so in the circumstances prevailing in Germany then, I left it altogether to revert to the matter. Whenever I had to take up contact with the Party Chancellery I did so through the head of Department 3 or of the Justice Group 3-C.
Q. Those were your personal relations with Bormann. Now I have a few more questions relating to your work at the Party Chancellery. As early as 1941 Himmler as the chief of the German police, is said to have expressed the wish, that is to say, towards the Party Chancellery, that all Poles should be withdrawn from the administration of German Justice. At that time, in 1941, he intended to get the Poles under his own jurisdiction, that is to say, the jurisdiction of the SS and the police. According to my information, Bormann is said to have supported that plan of Himmler's to begin with. Will you give us your views on that?
A. In the summer of 1941 Himmler wanted to got the Poles exclusively under the jurisdiction of the police and withdraw them completely from the Administration of Justice -- these Poles, too, who lived in t the Reich. Bormann passed on the letter to me, and in a kind of memorandum I expressed my views on the matter. That was at a time when Bormann and Himmler cooperated very closely. Without regard to that fact I stated the development that would occur if those steps were taken. Above all I pointed out that the uniform administration of justice which had been established between 1933 and 1935 would be increasingly undermined and would disintegrate. I pointed out that the Administration of Justice since that time had first had the army administration of justice segregated from it, and that next the Reich Labor Service had had its own administration of justice established which made it possible for the labor service to pronounce prison sentences up to eight or nine months.
Furthermore, I pointed out that the SS and the police had been withdrawn from the administration of justice and that a completely independent SS and police judiciary had been created. That is to say. I described how the former work of centralizing the administration of justice had been undone through other steps, not to mention tho events that occurred during the war by way of the administrative and ordinance penal law, through which more large fields were withdrawn from the administration of justice. I achieve at least that Bormann returned my memorandum to me, and had noted on it: We will leave it to Himmler to discuss this mater with the Reich Ministry of Justice and to have it out with them alone. Himmler therefore did not receive that aid and support from Bormann which he had hoped for.
Q. Earlier, concerning your work in the Reichministry of Justice up to 1939, we discussed the Malicious Acts Law. When you worked at the Party Chancellery there is supposed to have been a plan of transferring the competence of prosecuting crimes against tho Malicious Acts Law from the Ministry of Justice to the Prosecutors General. What was your attitude to that plan at the time, and what position did you take up on that particular point?
A. From my own work during the years 1935 to 1939 at the Reich Ministry of Justice I knew the enormous amount of work those reports on malicious acts cases caused, and I know how the preparations, the work before the indictment was made or the proceedings were discontinued, was prolonged. An the same, coming from the field of the Party Chancellery, I had to stop it.
This was the reason that the Gauleiters again and again attempted to have the authority of approving the prosecution delegated to themselves. That was refused time and again with the reason that that was a matter to be dealt with by the Ministry of Justice and the Party Chancellery. At the moment, where a decision would have been made on the level of the District Courts of Appeal - that is to say, on the level of the General Prosecutor - whether the case was to be prosecuted or not, the Gauleiters quite easily would have prevailed on Hitler with their idea that the Party Chancellery could transfer the decision to them - the Gauleiters. The result would have been that the moderate application of the Malicious Acts law would have ceased, and the Malicious Acts law would have been applied with far greater severity and without uniformity in the various districts, because the Gauleiters would have forced their opinions on the General Prosecutors.
Q. Will you tell the Tribunal, please, at what time that plan was pending?
A. That plan came up several times, I believe, in '42 and '43.
Q. The indictment, Herr Klemm, charges you with having supported illegal extension of the concept of high treason and treason in its application by the People's Court. During the time you worked at the Party Chancellery, did you supervise the sentences passed by the People's Court?
A. We never checked up on the sentences passed by the People's Court, nor was any checking up on sentences possible, with so little staff as we had available. At Group III-C, the Justice Group, there were only six jurists, and at most times there were fewer jurists. In the years '41 to '42 there were only four of us.
Q. But you have stated at one time to have asked to see ten sentences passed by the People's Court. For what purposes did you do so?
A. Maybe it was ten sentences, may it was twice ten sentences. I don't remember the exact number. But that had a very particular reason. After Freisler had become President of the People's Court, he tried to establish particularly close contact with various Party agencies, bypassing the Ministry of Justice.
In the course of those measures Freisler also submitted to the training office of the NSDAP under Ley sentences passed by the People's Court for use as training material. The Training Office (Schulungsamt) made extracts of those People's Court sentences and issued them as material for speeches, that is to say, those extracts. These extracts had been made by a man who was not a jurist and a great deal of nonsense was contained in them.
We in the jurist group, Group III-C, saw it quite by chance. We heard how those extracts had been made. Thereupon, we asked to have the sentences sent to us to compare them with the extracts. We used the material to stop that nonsense going on. I would like to mention one example. Those extracts consisted of three sections. In the first section the facts of the case were described in brief. In the second paragraph the sentence was given, but with only a few clues, for example, death sentence, or ten years penitentiary. The third section gave the reason for the sentence.
In a sentence passed against a defeatist the phrase is found, "The sentenced person, after the seizure of power on the part of Hitler, made a very good living. Therefore he owed particular gratefulness to Hitler. He was not particularly grateful and therefore he is deprived of his civil rights." The extract said, "The person has been sentenced to death because he earned too much under the Third Reich." No other reasons were given. That such extracts could only injure the reputation of the Administration of Justice is obvious. Therefore we stopped that procedure, and that was the reason why once we asked for a considerable number of sentences passed by the People's Court.
Q. After, in August 1942, the post of the Minister of Justice had been newly filled, at the same time the organization of the so-called Gau Legal Offices and Reich Legal Offices was abandoned. Will you tell us, please, whether you at the Party Chancellery had anything to do with that.
A. In broad outlines I described that when I spoke about the circular letter which the Party Chancellery issued when Thierack became Minister of Justice. The dissolution of those Party institutions - or rather the closing down of these organizations in war time - that was the only possibility at the time. That was urged by the justice group so that Frank's influence and that of his instruments of power - I am referring to the Lawyers League (Rechtswahrerbund) at the Reich Legal Office - was to be eliminated. If the Reich Legal Office no longer existed, the Gau and District Legal Offices also ceased to function. The closing down of the Reich Legal Office happened to coincide with the appointment of Thierack to be Ministry cf Justice. He used that opportunity at last to carry it into effect.
Q. The prosecution in that connection produced Exhibit 47: that is NG-290. It is contained in Volume 1-A, page 47 and following in the German text. The first page of Exhibit 47 gives Hitler's orders that Frank, whom you just mentioned, has given up his posts. The third page of this exhibit deals with you. It is a letter signed by Thierack, dated 10 September '42. Thierack has added to his name: Oberbefehlsleiter of the NS-Rechtswahrerbund (Lawyers League). Here you are appointed liaison man of the head of the NS-Reehtswahrerbund - that is Thierack - to the Munich agencies of the Reich leadership. Will you explain to the Tribunal what you did in your capacity as liaison man?
A. That appointment was actually only on paper. I only went into action once, and that was when I negotiated with the Reich Treasury about the use of a site which was the property of the NS-Rechtswahrerbund.
Q Now we have finished with the group of questions which concern the party chancellery. Now, we are coming to the last phase, that is, your work as under secretary at the Reich Ministry of Justice. The Tribunal knows when you became under secretary. Now, I am asking you, did you, yourself, have any influence on your appointment to be under secretary in January 1944?
A No, I did not. During the last three months of 1943 I heard Thierack say to me that he was thinking it over whether he should propose me to be his under secretary; then, I heard nothing more. I only told the head of my department at the party chancellery about that remark of Thierack's.
Q At any rate, it was Thierack who appointed you, and it appears necessary that you should describe in some detail your personal relalions with Thierack. Would you do that, please, by using and referring to the documents which the Prosecution has submitted. I would like to tell the Tribunal that quite a number of documents are concerned from the list which I have submitted to the Tribunal. Exhibit 58 -- I will just read out the numbers: 62, 283, 466, 26, 68, 90, 39, 143, 41, 252, 451, 263, 290, 103, and lastly, 291. Would you begin, please.
A From November, 1929 until 1933 I worked with the Prosecution at Dresden as an assessor; and very soon I became permanent referent. At the same time Thierack was the senior prosecutor, with the office of the general prosecutor of the District Court of Appeals, Oberlandsgericht, Dresden. With the general prosecutor, complaints were dealt with concerning decisions by the prosecution to quash proceedings; among other things Thierack had to deal with complaints against decisions to quash penal proceedings which I at the Dresden prosecution office had issued. Particularly concerning the bigger questions we at the Dresden prosecution office were asked to report to the experts, the General Prosecutor, in order to discuss these matters. In that way I made Thierack's acquaintance. On 10th March, 1933, Thierack was appointed the delegate of the Reich Commissar for the Administration of Justice in Saxony.
Shortly afterwards he became Minister of Justice for Saxony. Immediately after the first appointment my superior, the senior prosecutor Fiernitz, at the Dresden District Court, Landgericht came to see me and told me that on that very day I was to report at the Ministry of Justice for Saxony. I had to go to Thierack and he told me that he wanted me to be his personal referent and adjutant. I was in civilian clothes I did not possess a uniform in those days, and I was not wearing a party badge. Thierack immediately told me that on duty and in the office, party badges were not worn -- at the Ministry we were jurists and not party members. A few days later another jurists appeared in a SA uniform. Thierack immediately sent him home to change into civilian clothes before he could pay further calls at the Ministry or could do any work there. A change in these matters only took place when Hitler or Hess gave the order that party badges had to be worn on official duty. The work as adjutant with Thierack was of secondary importance altogether. The work as personal referent concerned mainly reports on those files which had been submitted to the minister for his information or signature -- reports which came from the various experts, sachbearbeiters. The work further more consisted of looking through the mail. In addition, there were further special missions, chiefly concerning penal matters such as I described in the Hohenstein case. Our relations with each other were official and impersonal, frequently not without tactlessness and rudeness. I did not take that very seriously, for I was better of than other people for the reason because with me it usually happened when I was alone with him; but I saw it happen that the Ministerialdirector, both of whom were over sixty years of age, were treated in the same way, even in my presence. One of them until March, 1933 had been Thierack's superior. That impersonal and purely official relationship with Thierack was caused on the one hand by the distance between us due to the positions we held, and on the other hand on account of the difference in age of fourteen years.
During these years from 1933 to 1935, when I was Thierack's personal referent, I only got to know Thierack as a man who represented altogether the constitutional state. At the very beginning, in March, he sent Jewish or Marxist officials of the judiciary on leave at their full pay, only in order to avoid transgressions on the part of the SA or the SS at the office of the Ministry of Justice, should anything happen. Final measures he took only when there was a legal basis. Party members who were no good at their job, and who evidently only were hunting for a job, received no support whatsoever from him.
THE PRESIDENT: May I ask you a question. Are you referring now to your relations with Thierack during the Saxony period alone or also after he became Minister of Justice.
A Thierack from 1933 to 1935 was Minister of Justice for Saxony, and I am only speaking of that period at the moment. That was when I got to know Thierack better.
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you.
There were attorneys at law, old party members, who were inefficient and, therefore, did not have a good practice. Therefore, they tried to get a position as civil servant. Thierack did not let one of these people enter the Administration of Justice for Saxony. He did not allow the very cumbersome Gauleiter Mutschmann to interfere with the Administration of Justice in the slightest degree. I saw it happen that Thierack simply replaced the receiver when telephoning, and simply left the Gauleileiter standing there by the telephone.
Like myself he took the view that a party member or an SA man who had committed a criminal offense had to be proceeded against with particular severity because he had injured the reputation of National Socialism by giving a bad example. On 31 March 1935, the Ministry of Justice of Saxon was dissolved. Until that time Thierack had still been the delegate of the Reich Minister of Justice for the so-called intermediate group, Mittelgruppe. Theirack went as vice president of the Supreme Reich Court to Leipzig, and as I have said here before, I went to the Ministry of Justice in Berlin. In 1936 Thierack went to the People's Court in Berlin. During the years from 1935, beginning with April until Thierack's appointment to be Reich Minister of Justice, in august 1942, that is to say barely seven years and six months, I saw Thierack perhaps ten or twelve times, usually it was at a meeting of a public occasion, not at the office. What I heard about or from Thierack in these seven and a half years did in no way change the picture that I had of him during the time I worked with him in Dresden. In this connection I would refer to a speech by Thierack which was published in "Deutsche Justiz" in 1936, page 908, it is printed there in part; Thierack said the task of the People's Court is to protect the people, based solely on law, and that the judges should do their work with the fact of inner freedom, clarity and responsibility. In these rare cases when I met Thierack, he repeatedly complained bitterly to me, in particular about Freisler, saying that he did not take up the cause of the judiciary with sufficient energy. He only spoke of Frank contemptuously, he said that he did not do any work. The documents, too gives some pointers here, I mean the documents which were submitted by the Prosecution. I am referring to exhibit 62, the program of administration of justice which Thierack sent to Lammers. There, again, he said that a judge could not take orders.
I would also refer to exhibit 283, in which the lawyer Grunwald said that Thierack had been an objective presiding judge, at the People's Court. When, after his appointment to be Minister of Justice, I met Thierack for the first tine and congratulated him, he said to me literally, "be careful with your congratulations, I have already had my ears boxed for the first time." Freisler had become presiding judge of the People's Court in spite of ay objections. All of these circumstances such as I have described then here in brief, confirm to me the impression that Thierack, as in Saxony, took the view of the constitutional state, and that he was willing to re-establish an independent and strong judiciary. And, that is how I looked at the special power of attorney, which at that time, was given to Thierack. At that time Thierack asked me in all matters concerning the justice group of the Party Chancellery to come to him and that is to him personally, immediately, and not to discuss them with the various Referents at the Ministry. As a reason he gave this: the work of the Ministry on the department level was not known to him so very well, nor that of the working method of the Party Chancellery, and as I had worked in both fields, the best thing for him to get acquainted with the natter would be if I reported to him in person. Relations between Thierack and myself remained the some during that period as they had been in Dresden. Matters of high policy in the administration of justice, were not discussed at all or only in bits. He mentioned one or two natters to me but only quite by the way, as remarks, for example, he told me Himmler had asked him to transfer the prosecution to him, had, in fact, asked him to have the prosecution incorporated into the police organization, and he had refused flatly. But all these were merely remarks quite by the way. To ask Thierack about such matters was useless, anything he did not wish to say he simply did not discuss at all. I did try to place our relationship on a somewhat higher level in that respect, and I told him that he would have to be careful concerning two people now that he entered the big game of politics.
Those two people were Himmler and Bormann. Everything Himmler had was lost to the judiciary forever, that is what I said; and, Bormann, was as cold as ice at the game. He merely exploited people for his own end and for his own interest, and did not mind dropping a man from one day to the next. Concerning those remarks of mine, Thierack ostentatiously ignored them by changing over to an entirely different subject. But at that time, Thierack gave me a great deal of evidence to show that he thought on the basis of a constitutional state. In this connection, too, I would refer to an article by Thierack in "Deutsche Justiz", 1942, page 661, where again he emphasizes that judges must remain unbound by instructions. The judges letters were sent to me, and there, too, again and again, he emphasized the independence of judges. And in his speech at Breslau, that is EG 275, before thousands of people, he made the same statement, and along the same lines is the letter to Freisler, dated 4 September 1942, that is NG 159, exhibit 68, where with great urgency he says that judges must be independent and that no instructions must be given them, but that they are merely to be persuaded.
THE PRESIDENT: What was the exhibit number?
MR. KLEMM (Witness): 68, Your Honor.
THE PRESIDENT: If you will wait a moment until I finish my question. What was the exhibit number of NG 275, which was not given.
MR. KLEMM (Witness) Exhibit 25, Your Honor.
On the other hand, today I know that Thierack, after he had become Minister, and later on when I was Under-Secretary, did not discuss with me the most important matters concerning the administration of justice.
What I have in mind mainly is the transfer of prisoners to the police. That is Exhibit 39, -- 654-PS. And his letter to Bormann. That is Exhibit 143,--NG-558, letter dated 13 October 1942. The explanation is that matters were involved here concerning the very men of whom I had warned him at the time. When in 1944 I entered the Ministry of Justice as Under Secretary, I became convinced during the first few days that Thierack was not willing to take my advice, or to allow me independence such as is usually permitted to an Under Secretary. There were a few exceptions. I was independent in matters concerning personnel policy up to the rank of an Oberrat. That is to say, a senior prosecutor or director of a District Court-Landgerichtsdirector. And I did have a great deal of independence in the management of Department II. That was the Department dealing with examinations and with the new generation. But that was only possible because that Department had no head of Department and I had declared myself willing to take charge of that Department myself. When I went to Berlin I lived in Thierack's house after I had become Under Secretary. That was not done because of personal contacts but for very sober and realistic reasons.
THE PRESIDENT: We will now take a fifteen minute recess.
(A recess was taken)
THE MARSHAL: Persons in the courtroom will please find their seats The Tribunal is again in session.
BY DR. SCHILF:
Q. Witness, you mentioned your relation to Thierack during the time when you were under-secretary. Would you please continue?
A. I had explained last that the fact that I lived in the house of Thierack was for very sober and realistic reasons. My family lived in Munich. To take my family to Berlin that did not succeed because there was a lack of housing as a consequence of the destruction by aerial warfare. Also just at that time women and children were being evacuated from Berlin. It was impossible to find an apartment. In boarding houses and hotels one could not remain as a permanent tenant, because there was also a tremendous scarcity of such places in Berlin. The Reich Ministry of Justice, as a civilian authority, had an allotment for an entire month of 25 liters of fuel and with that the entire personnel of the Ministry of Justice had to get along. The ministers and under-secretaries, therefore, altogether had only one car at their disposal. At the same time Thierack had been requested to take additional people into his house on account of the destruction by aerial warfare and since furthermore Thierack considered it important to take people into his house who could take an active part in case of a danger to the house by incendiary bombs. At that time, therefore, a justice sergeant and myself moved into the house with him and every day the three of us had to travel in one and the same car. The greatest impediment, however, against getting into a more intimate relationship with Thierack was his reticence which in the course of the time during which I lived in his house increased more and more. Today I know that Thierack was extremely reticent with me and a different man than he appeared to me. The greatest obstacle for my independent and adequate activity as an under-secretary was that I had previously been an adjutant and personal Referent of Thierack. This condition remained almost unchanged in the course of time. My only support was the official relationship in the Ministry between superior and subordinate and in the course of time I gained the confidence of individual officials in the Ministry who came to me with their worries.
Thierack was an autocrat and absolutely convinced of the accuracy of his opinions. He would listen to the opinions of others, especially in cases where he himself was not quite clear about it, but he very frequently rejected the opinions of others, very frequently by ironical and rather tactless remarks without consideration as to whether that occurred not only in their presence or in the presence of others and without considering whether that person in question was an undersecretary or any junior assistant. That he might have still considered me his junior assistant as before may be illustrated by something which we find in the documents. I refer to Exhibit 41, NG-607. At that time I had been in office as under-secretary for five weeks. Thierack gave me the form with the notation or the entire personal file of Franke with the remark that I should take the necessary steps for the promotion of Franke. This is how the notation came about to the Chief of Division I, the Minister wants to initiate the promotion of Franke to the position of Ministerialrat. That is typical of the activity of an adjutant which I had to carry out in this case. Above all, however, I refer to Exhibit 45, NG-195. It is the conference of the chiefs of divisions of the 6th of January 1944, three days after I assumed office. It says, and I quote:
"By the re-appointment for the position of under-secretary no change in the policy of the administration is brought about."
End of Quotation.
That did not mean that that was the result of a conference between the Minister and myself, but these words were an independent statement on the part of Thierack and at the same time a directive to the chiefs of the departments and to myself. According to the same records Divisions III, IV, and V, and were also again subordinated to me. That meant the following: Each department chief handles independently all general matters but matters of particular importance are to be Submitted to the Minister; to the Under-Secretary only those matters arc to be submitted which are not quite important enough to warrant their being submitted to the Minister but important enough that the department chief can not assume responsibility for them himself. That supervision of departments in practice was only on paper as a result of the measures taken by Thierack. In fact the same condition as before prevailed. All incoming mail went first to the Minister and was then channeled to the Under-Secretary. Thus it occurred that the Minister by ordering reports or by reserving the right of final signature himself, or oven by jotting down his opinion or decision in telegram style on it, reserved the final decision for himself. Mail that had thus been handled by the Minister came next to the Under-Secretary. In peace time that alone meant that automatically the Under-Secretary was informed because one had to report to the Minister only after on had reported to the Under-Secretary. During my time in office it was 95 per cent different. In consequence of conditions caused by the war there was not sufficient time to report to two different places. The people who made tho reports came from outside, from the various emergency establishments. In addition to these reports they had a lot of things to accomplish while they were there. They were glad if they could take care of everything in one day and return the same night. In this manner it happened quite frequently that if I would listen to the reports with the Minister at the same time that was actually arranged. This form of subordination looked quite different in practice because the Minister restricted the departments very much in their freedom of decision, and the subordination of the departments to the Under-Secretary, on account of the many instructions to report directly, were made illusory by the Minister himself.
I shall refer to that in greater detail in connection with Document Book III-L. What the Minister actually left to me to deal I with independently I have described already, before; it was the activity in personnel matters and in Division II. I have also described already that the Minister was not accessible to a different opinion, yet from time to time I succeeded in changing his opinion. The individual cases I shall mention later. Otherwise, too, there was much which followed the previous pattern such as I had known it from Thierack before. For instance, he actually was hostile to Goebbels for reasons of the Administration of Justice, and toward me Theirack also displayed the point of view that his hardest struggle was yet to come after peace had been made because then there would be the great dispute with police for the independence of the Administration of Justice, and that struggle he would fight out to the end. That is the impression he intended to make upon me; that, in fact, it looked different I have seen from the documents which were submitted here. At that time it was achieved to change Hitler's mind about interfering in sentences of the Administration of Justice on the basis of newspaper notices which he had read. Toward the end of 1944 that stopped entirely. Not even inquiries were made. Personally, I did not have an easy job when I became an Under-Secretary; already because I had to start my work only very carefully and with a great deal of tact, because many of those who from that time on had to report to me had several years before, when I was still in the Ministry of Justice, been my superiors. I was also forced to try frequently to make up for tho rudeness and tactlessness of Thierack. On the other hand, it was my intention to avoid showing openly that differences of opinion existed between Theirack and myself, because I, myself, between the period of 1935 and 1939 learned how seriously differences of opinion between Under-Secretaries and Ministers could influence the work of the department. At that time we experienced that very frequently between Guertner and Friesler.
Q That explains exhaustively your relationship to Theirack. How we come to the technical field of your activity as Under-Secretary.
First we want to discuss Exhibit 252 which has already been mentioned which is NG 4l4; Document Book III L. The Prosecution has submitted that document book, in the table of contents of document book L, it is designated as Lists containing death sentences which had allegedly been approved by your. This document is very extensive and to illustrate it to the Tribunal in its true nature I should like you to explain briefly how those reports to the Minister were made, whether you were present what part you played in it?
A Reports to the Minister of Under Secretary were made first upon their orders or on the initiative of the Divisions in putting these reports on the schedule; moreover, there was a directive that all death sentences always had to be reported to the Minister. That has been proven by documents; in Exhibit 45, during the conference of the Division Chiefs, the Minister again emphasized specifically that this should be done as can be seen from the minutes of that session. There are three types of these schedules or lists, such as are shown on the 142 pages of that document. They are either schedules which list only individual penal cases, or lists containing only death sentences, or lists containing individual penal cases and death sentences. Again I am grateful to the Prosecution that this extensive amount of material is available because on the basis of these documents an extraordinary amount of things can be clarified. The only thing which really is wrong with the document as submitted, is a statement in the index that it deals with death sentences which I had approved. Later I shall explain in detail that only the following lists refer to me. The lists on sheet 23, that is 2 in the English text, 79, or 91 in the English text, and 92, 93 in the German; that is 104 to 106 in the English text. Those are lists containing death sentences. According to sheet 79 a part of the death sentences listed there never were reported because the files, on account of an air attack, had been destroyed. Furthermore, among my lists of reports are the lists concerning individual penal eases, sheet 6; that is English Book, sheets 5 and 6, sheet 77 which is 87 and 88 in the English Book; 91, that is 103 and 104 in the English book, and 135 in the German, that is, 154 and 155 in the English text.